Resolution of the Executive Committee of the St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers’ Deputies on Measures for Counteracting the Lock-Out Adopted on November 14 (27), 1905[1]

Published:Novaya Zhizn, No. 13, November 15, 1905.

      Published according to the text inNovaya Zhizn.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1965,

      Moscow,Volume 10,

      pages50-51.Translated:Transcription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Accordingto Soviet Historian E.H. Carr, he disputes Lenin’s
authorship of this document inThe Bolshevik Revolution Volume 1.Specifically, Carr explains that Trotsky (who would soon be
president of the Soviet) seems to claim authorship of the document as
well. Furthermore, he explains that Lenin was never a member of the
executive committee, and he claims that the sole source material LCW
used was from an "obscure author" in a book of reminiscences.

TheMIA is not able to confirm or deny these claims. Such scholarly
critiques are worthy of consideration and deserve serious research to
either confirm or deny.

Citizens,over a hundred thousand workers have been
thrown on to the streets in St. Petersburg and other cities.

Theautocratic
government has declared war on the revolutionary proletariat. The reactionary
bourgeoisie is joining hands with the autocracy, intending to starve the workers
into submission and disrupt the struggle for freedom.

TheSoviet of Workers’ Deputies declares that this unparalleled mass dismissal
of workers is an act of provocation on the part of the government. The
government wants to provoke the proletariat of St. Petersburg to isolated out
breaks; the government wants to take advantage of the fact that the workers of
other cities have not yet rallied closely enough to the St. Petersburg workers,
and to defeat them all peacemeal.

TheSoviet of Workers’ Deputies declares that the cause of liberty is in
danger. But the workers will not fall into the trap laid by the government. The
workers will not accept battle in the unfavourable conditions in which the
government wants to impose battle on them. We must and shall exert every effort to
unite the whole struggle—the struggle that is being waged both by the
proletariat of all Russia and by the revolutionary peasantry, both by the Army
and by the Navy, which are already heroically rising for freedom.

Inview of the foregoing, the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies resolves:

(1)Allfactories that have been shut down must immediately be reopened and all
    dismissed comrades reinstated. All sections of the people that cherish
    freedom in reality, and not in words only, are invited to support this
    demand.

(2)Insupport of this demand, the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies considers it
    necessary to appeal to the solidarity of the entire Russian proletariat,
    and, if the demand is rejected, to call upon the latter to resort to a
    general political strike and other forms of resolute struggle.

(3)Inpreparation for this action, the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies has
    instructed the Executive Committee to enter into immediate communication
    with the workers of other cities, with the railwaymen’s, post and telegraph
    employees’, peasant and other unions, as well as with the Army and Navy, by
    sending delegates and by other means.

(4)Assoon as this preliminary work is completed, the Executive Committee is to
    call a special meeting of the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies to take a final
    decision with regard to a strike.

(5)TheSt. Petersburg proletariat has asked all the workers and all sections
    of society and the people to support the dismissed workers with all the
    means at their disposal—material, moral and political.

[1]Atthe meeting of the St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers’
Deputies held on November 13 (26), 1905, Lenin spoke of measures to counteract
the lock-out organised by the capitalists in reply to the eight-hour day which
the workers had introduced by their own decision. He moved a resolution on the
basis of which the Executive Committee of the St. Petersburg Soviet on November
14 (27) took a decision on measures against the lock-out. Lenin
stressed the
significanceof that decision in the article “The Provocation That
 Failed” (see pp. 52-53 of this volume).